METAPHORS AND THE BODY

If you read our amaz­ing lo­cal magazine reg­u­larly then you would have no­ticed me on the front cover of the last is­sue when we looked at the age of anx­i­ety.

I’m su­per ex­cited to bring you this lit­tle col­umn ev­ery cou­ple of months where we can ex­plore nat­u­ral health and have fun.

So I’ve de­cided to write about metaphors and the body — strange I know, but stick with me!

When peo­ple visit me in clinic for a phys­i­cal ail­ment and I start ask­ing what’s go­ing on emo­tion­ally they can think it’s strange.

How can what’s hap­pen­ing phys­i­cally have any­thing to do with our emo­tions?

Yet as we delve deeper and we start to in­ter­pret what the body is telling us, it rings true.

The left side of our body is to do with fe­male en­ergy and what we in­ter­nalise, whereas the right side is to do with male en­ergy and what we ex­ter­nalise. Here’s a lit­tle list of some com­mon ailments that can come up: ■ Up­set tummy: Let’s look at it metaphor­i­cally – you could ask ‘what’s hap­pen­ing emo­tion­ally that I can’t stom­ach at the mo­ment?’ — it could be an up­set at work, school or home.

■ Stiff neck: Are you ‘stick­ing your neck out’ (lit­er­ally and metaphor­i­cally), or are you be­ing in­flex­i­ble on an is­sue?

■ Heel pain can be as­so­ci­ated with feel­ing like you are ‘on the back foot’ about some­thing.

■ Shoul­ders can of­ten con­gest and ache when we have the ‘weight of the world on our shoul­ders’ or feel like we are ‘shoul­der­ing a bur­den’.

Re­mem­ber to al­ways check in with your natur­opath or GP to be on the safe side and talk about what’s hap­pen­ing for you.